Winds of change or just venting?

This weekend’s protests against election fraud – Russia’s largest in over 10 years – gathered between 25 and 100 thousand people in downtown Moscow. While some commentators claimed they marked the rebirth of civil society, others predicted their disappearance into historical oblivion amid the New Year fuss.

Protests were a success

“The feeling of composed power and righteousness was astonishing,” Boris
Dubin, head of sociopolitical research at the Levada
Center (Russia’s largest independent
pollster), said of the rally at Bolotnaya
Square. He added this feeling was even more
surprising after the events of 1990s and 2000s, characterized in Russia
by both extreme aggression total indifference.

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Stanislav Kucher, a political commentator at Kommersant FM, was
confident that Saturday’s protests were a success. President Dmitry Medvedev
commented on the demonstrations on his Facebook page, indicating a willingness
to engage the opposition in dialogue.

“Russian authorities will make serious compromises [with the opposition].
Federal TV broadcasting will revive and change dramatically. Clubs, TV and
radio-stations will become a place for long-awaited public discussion. Presidential
elections will become [competitive] and will be held without [Central Election
Commission Chairman Vladimir] Churov. [But] nothing significant should be
expected before the New Year.”

According to an editorial in business daily Vedomosti, Saturday’s
protests could be seen as a permit for Russian civil society to organize
[similar] mass activities. “Those [demonstrators] will continue to attend rallies,
especially when the presidential campaign starts next year.”

The protests both simplified and hardened the tandem’s dialogue with the
West, wrote Konstantin von Eggert, Kommersant FM’s international affairs
commentator. On the one hand, Russia’s
rulers can now claim they are in control of the country while simultaneously
respecting democratic rights. On the other, they can no longer blame the likes
of Hillary Clinton for causing the protests, said Eggert.

“What’s next? Nothing.”

Moscow faces vote protests. Click the picture to view gallery

Gazeta.ru was much
more pessimistic about Russia’s
political future: “Russian authorities won’t make any concessions and won’t
fulfill the demands of the protesters,” according to an editorial. Moreover
while Medvedev’s Facebook comment showed he intends to investigate election
violations, he also didn’t express solidarity with any of the other demands.

After observing the
protestors, Andrey Kolesnikov of business daily Kommersant concluded that he had
witnessed an oxymoron: “a protest of satisfied people.” Elena Racheva of
OpenSpace.ru was more blunt: “You can’t alter politics by liking stuff on
Facebook and retweeting videos of ballot stuffing. You can’t create an
opposition movement by writing “Go f*** yourself” on a poster and adding
lawyers’ numbers to your mobile phonebook. And even applying a resolution with
re-elections claims is not enough…What’s next? Seems to me, nothing.”

Finding an alternative

“We have to create an alternative system from a
scratch. We have to bring together economists, lawyers, and well-educated
people and find working mechanisms which can replace the existing system
through a discussion,” commented Nikita Petukhov, deputy editor-in-chief of the
Moskovskiye Novosti daily. “It’s the only way to at least try to create a state
system as a strong alternative to the current one.”